Why I Love The Beatles

Explain to me why you all like the Beatles so much. I get their place in music. I respect that. But I do not understand why people love so many of their songs. There's maybe a handful I can honestly say are top notch. =/

When someone tells me to explain why I love The Beatles, I take the task very seriously. So when LiT did just that, I knew I didn't want this to be "just another support blog," but rather something I could be proud of. Because in my mind, The Beatles deserve no less than that. But I have been listening to The Beatles and considering them my favorite band for almost as long as I can remember; it's not easy to put it into words. It's a feeling. So I will try, LiT, to fully explain my love for The Beatles.

Where do I begin? We'll go with the band members themselves. John, Paul, George, and Ringo are all incredibly talented musicians, and they were a captivating group of individuals both in and out of the music studio. I get the sense they simply enjoyed what they were doing, and that makes it easy for me to enjoy their songs. I have a tremendous amount of respect for all four guys, and an equal amount of respect for their producer, George Martin. Often called "the 5th Beatle," Martin is perhaps the greatest producer modern music has ever seen. Martin had the insight to help The Beatles create the catchy, poppy music of the band's early career, and later on he started taking their ideas, and the result was groundbreaking studio experimentation.

I tend to split the band's career into two separate categories. For simplicity's sake, I refer to them as the early days (Please Please Me through Help!) and the later days (Rubber Soul through Let It Be). The early days are what give people the impression that The Beatles are all about simple, catchy songs that don't do anything particularly special. While I can't argue with that, I also find this era incredibly fun. We received plenty of songwriting gems from this period, and to me this is proof that music doesn't need to be complex or innovative to be good.

I love me some good harmonies, and nobody did it better than The Beatles. I suppose it's that's more of a mere preference than anything else, but it has a lot to do with why I can appreciate the band's early days as much as I do.

After Help!, The Beatles started to re-focus their attention a bit more towards the studio. They still performed live until 1966, but Rubber Soul is the first album where you can really hear the band progress more towards innovation and away from their boyish charm of the Beatlemania days. This is also where my love for the band's music really picks up steam; as much as I love the early days, it doesn't get any better than Rubber Soul through Let It Be, in my opinion. It's where you can start to appreciate the band members as musicians. John and Paul are exceptionally gifted vocalists, Paul is an incredible bassist (one of my favorites), George is a talented yet underappreciated guitarist, and Ringo -- despite what people say -- is actually quite a good drummer. To quote Wikipedia:

As drummer for The Beatles, Starr was musically creative, and his contribution to the band's music has received high praise from notable drummers in more recent times. Starr described himself as "your basic offbeat drummer with funny fills", technically limited by being a left-handed person playing a right-handed kit.[1] Drummer Steve Smith said that Starr's popularity "brought forth a new paradigm" where "we started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect" and that Starr "composed unique, stylistic drum parts for The Beatles songs". In 2011, Starr was picked as the fifth-best drummer of all-time by Rolling Stone readers.[2]

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the creative apex. What always amazes me about The Beatles is their ability to take on extremely diverse and unconventional styles of music and pull it off. I really don't know any other bands that are as diverse as the Fab Four. Their creativity and innovation continues all the way through their last studio album together.

Another thing I love about The Beatles is the fact that every member contributed in a very prominent way. All four members sang lead vocals on at least one song on every album. There was no chief songwriter or creative mind because they all had brilliant ideas, and they all listened to one another. As I mentioned before, the oversight of George Martin ensured that the creativity never dipped.

I love The Beatles because they have influenced my taste in music more so than any other band. Some bands just mean a lot to certain people, and The Beatles mean a lot to me. They've managed to hold my interest ever since I was a kid; their appeal simply doesn't wear out on me. On the simplest level, that's really all there is to it. It has nothing to do with other people saying The Beatles are the best band of all-time or the fact that many of their albums frequent "best albums of all-time" lists or anything like that. This is just the type of music I like. The Beatles amaze and fascinate me. I find their story and rise to fame very interesting, and I love learning as much as I can about the band.

So I hope I accomplished two things:

1) I provided some insight into the mind of a Beatles fan.

2) I was sensible and didn't bore you or anything of that nature.

If I did, excellent! Mission accomplished. If you're still a person doesn't get all the hype for The Beatles, I'll have to try again another day.